The Acquired and the Innate
by elenathehun
Summary: Or: Ten times Toph learned something from another person, and one thing she learned all by herself.


Or: ten times Toph learned something from another person and one thing she learned all by herself.

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><p>1. Her father taught her how to stand. It sounds unimportant, but it was truly necessary; by the time she was a year old, she was already kicking chunks of rock at the nursemaid and tunneling her way through the walls. It's something every parent the world over has to do: He simply held her by her shoulders until she found her feet and ultimately her balance - the balance between herself and earth, in more ways than one.<p>

Toph doesn't actually remember this, but she can guess what it was probably like, considering her father did it nearly constantly as she grew. A hand pressed lightly on her shoulder, guiding her forward like she couldn't see; that was her early childhood in a nutshell.

2. The badgermoles taught her how to listen to the world, not just the earth. That's the mistake most other earthbenders make: assuming that the void and absence aren't a part of the whole.

3. Katara was Toph's first friend, so it's fitting that she taught her how to _be_ a friend. Aang was her student, and Sokka was a boy who was funny in all the right ways, but Katara was a girl, and a bender, and sort of understood what it meant to be both in places that didn't always. And more than that, Katara was her match; in stubbornness, in anger, in pride. Living with Katara meant she had to learn when to speak and when to be silent, when to oppose and when to support – the give and take of equal human interaction.

Sokka explained to her once how the tides were a function of the moon pulling the ocean as it orbited the earth; push and pull, back and forth. If Katara was Toph's first friend, then Toph was equally Katara's first friend. Toph likes to think they learned from each other.

4. Almost against her own will, Sokka taught her how to laugh with others instead of at them. Admittedly, he didn't mean to, but he did. Toph credits this to the fact that Sokka is seriously the most easygoing guy she knows.

5. Aang taught her patience. She will never tell anyone, but all the earthbenders she's taught _combined_ still don't add up to half the aggravation of teaching Aang. She likes to think it was a credit to her teaching style, otherwise known as _the constant threat of bludgeoning_, that Aang even learned how to earthsense. Teaching him metalbending was far beyond her talents as a teacher.

6. If Iroh taught her anything, it was by example: independence didn't mean being alone. (She learned the lesson within a day of meeting the guy; it took Zuko a hell of a lot longer.)

7. The guys at the earth rumbles taught her how to act. A persona is one of the most valuable skills a person can have, protection wherever one goes. At home, she was the little blind girl unable to take her place in open society; among the guys, she was the Blind Bandit, who spat and belched and farted with the best of them, in no way, shape or form a lady. Neither of them were true, but the audience didn't have to know that. That's why she was the only one who could laugh at that stupid play

8. In different ways, Appa, Suki, and Azula each taught her she wasn't infallible. She had to choose in the desert, and she chose her friends; that didn't mean it didn't hurt any less when the sandbenders took Appa away. She would have drowned if Suki hadn't saved her. And the failure of her lie detection technique against Azula's sociopathy was a nasty shock at the worst possible time.

Toph is the greatest earthbender in the world, but she's still human.

9. Zuko taught her how to read and write, using metal print blocks. Honestly, it's the sort of stupid mundane thing that anyone could have done, just by carving the character into the ground, but Zuko was the only person who ever thought of it, and then took to time to actually teach her.

10. Mai taught her how to throw knives, during a long, terrible week they were both stuck in Omashu. Mai was negotiating with Crazy King Bumi for her parents and brother (and yeah, Bumi really _is_ that crazy) and Toph was trying once again to be a dutiful daughter to parents who didn't want to see who she really was. It was never something they talked about, but after the torturous state dinners, they both always migrated to Mai's guest room, where Toph avoided another "talk" with her father by learning how to hit a pinprick target on the wall with needles and darts and tiny sharp knives. That was the easy part. Hitting a playing card floating through the air was a lot harder. At the end of the week, the ransom agreements finally went through, and Mai went back home with her parents and brother, but not before dryly telling Toph that Zuko was well used to girls ranting to him about their stupid parents.

Never let it be said Toph was slow on the uptake. She left in broad daylight this time, and not the cover of darkness, but she still left.

0. No one ever taught Toph how to be brave. That one, she learned all by herself.


End file.
